Nevers
by Gypsy Love
Summary: Jimmy and his state of mind after the shooting.
1. Chapter 1

There was the hope for awhile that he would regain function in his legs. There was that hope. Once it was clear he wasn't going to die they started hoping for the next thing, the legs working again thing that would make it possible for him to get out of this one.

The doctors were talking to his dad, telling him that with a spinal cord injury they had to wait for the swelling to go down before they could determine the true extent of the injuries. Jimmy heard this in a vague, dream like state. Oxygen tubing in his nose, an I.V. in his arm, various monitors around him making strange beeping noises. It was all he could do to be alive, never mind walking again.

His friends came and visited. Most of his friends. Marco cried, just cried right in front of him in the visitors chair, and all he could say was, "Oh, Jimmy…" Hazel cried, too, but not in front of him. Her eyes were always red and she sniffled but she didn't cry. She was being strong in front of him, even through the pain killers and the haze he could see that. Paige smiled at him, but her eyes were red, too. They always looked that funny sea green they got when she cried. Craig looked stunned, he took deep breaths and glanced around a lot. Spinner, however, couldn't seem to make it in.

No Spinner. No legs working again either. Each day that went by past the magic date when the swelling had gone down enough was proving that the paralysis was permanent. One psycho went into the school and out of all those kids there that day, all those kids who had ever shoved him against the lockers or tripped him or called him a name, out of all those kids he was the one who got shot. What sort of lousy odds were those? He'd won the lottery alright.

Psycho Rick, with his encyclopedic knowledge and his strange speech patterns and his general inability to fit in and his anger. Had he actually thought he was starting to like the kid? Had he really, after what he did to Terry? He relented, he'd given the kid a break and nearly got killed for it.

Every day in the hospital was a boring day. Test after test that simply showed the same thing, there was no connection from his brain to his lower body. He'd never walk again, but that wasn't the end of the list of nevers. He'd never run, play basketball, jump, be normal, again. Never.

At first Hazel came to see him a lot. Everyday. As time wore on she came less, still a lot, still at least three or four times a week but not everyday. Paige's visits tapered off, too. She averaged once or twice a week. Spinner never came. Never. Not once. It was Craig and Marco who came everyday.

Craig and Marco became his links to the outside world. The world beyond the hospital room and the hospital bed and the hospital staff and himself. The smell of that outside world clung to their clothes, it was in their hair. He could see the pen marks on their hands from the school day, could see lipstick on Craig's cheek where girls had kissed him. That world was real and alive and vital. Not like the hospital. The place of death and nevers.


	2. Chapter 2

It still seemed like a dream, a nightmare, but every day that wore on, things falling back into routines, made the dream quality ebb. Things were predictable in a hospital. Meals came at the same time. Nurses and doctors drifted in at about the same time. Even Craig and Marco came at the same time after school, rocking in the visitors chairs, getting up and walking around and Jimmy watched them, felt a sharp pang of jealousy as they walked, and he'd never really noticed the mechanics of it before. How complicated it was. The complex set of instructions from the brain to the nerve endings to the muscles and bones in the legs and feet, all working together to produce the smooth and fluid movement.

He narrowed his eyes at Craig and Marco, thinking about them. Thinking how they never really picked on Rick, were never really involved in that whole thing. He supposed they had other issues. Marco was dealing with being gay. Craig was dealing with…his parents' deaths, his girl disasters. Whatever. As for Marco, he didn't even think it was in him, to target and bully someone else on the paper thin excuse they had used. Craig, he didn't know. Maybe Craig understood something he hadn't, that people were volatile, that they could hurt you so you should be careful. Maybe Craig had learned that lesson and now he had, too.

He tried to be upbeat for them, to be cool. So he couldn't walk, he'd roll. No sweat. But after they left he'd cry, thinking how now he was the crippled friend even though they didn't treat him that way but it didn't matter. What was, was. And there was no way to change it.

Spinner was another matter altogether. His accomplice in crime. Spinner had met him cruelty for cruelty. There were days when they would toss Rick between them like some bruised and battered ball, shoving him against lockers and into dumpsters and calling him names and threatening him. For Terri's honor. He had hurt Terri, their friend. And so it had felt noble. They had to get rid of Rick, they had to teach him a lesson because their friend was hurt. It shrieked of honor and loyalty and friendship and so they could ignore the vicious pleasure that there was in driving someone so ruthlessly. They could ignore the sick fun of punching someone, of making someone moan in pain, of making someone get that look of fear in their eyes.

Spinner had yet to show up. He kept waiting, wanting to see him, wanting to see what blame would be reflected back at him. Craig and Marco didn't understand the extent of it. They didn't know to what degree he had brought this upon himself. Spinner knew. Spinner knew.

His dad would come visit, sorrow in his father eyes. Jimmy didn't know how to alleviate that sorrow. He couldn't walk. He couldn't go back. He couldn't make it better. His dad was faking a cheerfulness and a positive attitude that Jimmy knew wasn't real.

Craig and Marco didn't always come together. Sometimes one would show up first, then leave when the other arrived, making Jimmy think they were covering shifts. Marco was slowly loosing that sad look, getting used to the idea, he supposed. He supposed that they could get used to it a lot faster than he could. Marco would ask how he was, how the therapy was going, what the doctors said, what he was thinking, how he was feeling. Listening with that great ability of his to listen. Craig, on the other hand, talked about his life. Talked about the band and school and Ashley and Joey and Angela. If he mentioned Jimmy at all it was only in how his absence was affecting him, like he wasn't able to make a song work without him or he could really have used him in gym class or he missed him in the study hall they had together. It was okay. Craig's babbling about how Spinner fucked up at rehearsal or how him and Ashley were hanging out a lot was the only time everyone in the room wasn't completely focused on him.

Still, he wanted to see Spinner. He wouldn't mention it to Craig or Marco because they might drag him in, and he didn't want it that way. He wanted Spinner to come of his own accord.


	3. Chapter 3

Spinner. In the boring hours of the hospital, in the time suspension of the hours that dragged by Jimmy thought about Spinner more and more. More and more he was angry with him, angry that he couldn't show up even one time, or call, or anything. In ways he didn't always like to admit, Spinner was his best friend. Some best friend.

At least he had Craig and Marco's daily visits to look forward to, at least they broke up the monotony of his days. He could tell by the light outside his window that it was the end of the school day. He sighed, trying to suppress his hope that today Spinner would show up.

"Jimmy!" Craig came in followed by Marco, and they snapped off his music and rearranged the chairs, and Craig sat in the wheelchair that was next to his bed, rolled himself back and forth. Marco adjusted his hair with his fingers, looked up at him from underneath shaggy bangs.

Jimmy put on his happy face for them, tried to talk on the casual level that was where he wanted to stay lately. He didn't want to tell them that the new thing was for him to straight cath himself so he wouldn't have to have the foley bag hooked up to his bladder. It was more proof that the paralysis was here to stay. That was his schooling lately. He wondered bitterly what it was they were learning.

Hazel appeared in the doorway, and Craig and Marco looked at her and then at him, kind of nodded at each other.

"Hey, Jimmy, we're gonna get going," Marco said, slapping his shoulder. He could read their minds as they filed out, they wanted to give him privacy with his girlfriend. If they only knew how far from romantic he felt. Hazel could have been anyone.

Eventually she left, too, and he was left alone with the hospital staff and himself. Never tired, always being in bed, missing walking and moving with a vengeance, he cried himself to sleep. Crying didn't help. He'd have to wake up and face the realization that he couldn't walk and nothing would ever be the same again.

In his dreams and his waking hours he could see Rick, the gun pointed at him, and feel again the unreal fear that had come to him, that had flooded through him like his own blood. The sound the gun had made, the last sound before he hit the floor and was unconscious. He thought he might have died. He could have died. If the bullet had struck higher, if it hit a major artery or his lung or heart he'd be dead. And sometimes he thought it was too bad Rick was such a lousy shot.

He was tired of the hospital and the hospital walls and the hospital food, the bland little piles of food on his hospital tray. Tired of trying to seem okay for Marco and Craig even though he was glad they came to see him religiously. Tired of feeling hopeless, helpless. Tired of his father's concern, his relentless positive attitude. Tired of not really knowing what he wanted from people. Maybe the real problem was that none of them could fix it.

And again, no Spinner. It was almost mind blowing how he could be doing this to him. How callous. Jimmy could hardly fathom what was going through Spinner's head. He stared at the window, out the window, the sky a light blue. Evergreen trees in the foreground. Closed his eyes and saw Rick at his locker, dried paint and feathers stuck to it, his hand in his jacket, concealing. Nothing good was ever on T.V. in the afternoons. If he saw another life insurance commercial aimed toward dumb old people he'd scream.

The Physical Therapy nurse came by to see him and he smiled at her, tried to be cool, tried to be all, 'nothing fazes me, man,' Failed somewhat miserably. Tried on his too small smile.

"Hi, Jimmy," she said, and showed him the huge pad of paper she had in her hands.

"What's that?" he said, and she set it on the tray table by his bed.

"It's just something to do. You could draw or doodle. I know you're bored,"


	4. Chapter 4

He could lose himself in drawing. He could walk again, drawing it, seeing it, making his fingers make the lines that made his legs work. Hours could go by and he wouldn't know it.

Marco seemed okay, if a little weepy over Dylan. Dylan had dumped him, broke his heart, wanting to see other people. Marco told him in his tearful way, after asking all the requisite questions about him first. _How are you? How is therapy going? The drawings look good, they look real good, Jimmy._

Craig, though. Craig seemed a little off. He was talking a lot. Jimmy could barely keep up as he jumped from one topic to the next. He noticed how he had started bouncing his legs up and down, like all the energy had nowhere to go.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked one afternoon, watching Craig's legs bounce almost violently as he sat in the wheelchair, watching him do little wheelies around his room. Listening to the words, a flood of them, about everything. Ashley. Music. Joey. School. His dad. He couldn't remember him ever mentioning his dad before.

"Nothing. I'm fine. Totally fine," Craig said, glancing at him quick and then looking away. Jimmy shrugged. He didn't have the resources to deal with Marco's broken heart or Craig's…issues. So he listened to the flood of words and tried to keep up. He let Marco hug him, feeling the shaking start of the tears. He drew his drawings, doodled his doodles, getting lost in the world he could create on paper.

Through it all he wished for Spinner. The one person he longed to see. The one person who might be able to understand the guilt, the piece that had to be owned in all of this. That person wouldn't come.

The doctors, the nurses, the therapists, they all agreed that he could go home soon. He felt the swelling feeling of blood filling his heart at that. Home. He could be more normal there, less a freak of a violent act that had changed everything, all of their lives but especially his, forever. He couldn't wait to tell his dad.

Craig had come over again, without Marco. Jimmy glanced at the clock. School wasn't even out yet.

"What are you doing here?" Jimmy said, looking up from his drawings.

"Visiting," he said, rocking back in the wheelchair, gripping the wheels and rolling himself forward.

"Yes, I can see that. School isn't out yet,"

"Yeah. I skipped,"

Jimmy raised an eyebrow and said nothing, listened as Craig outlined the latest problem. Ashley's dad was having a wedding and Joey was painting his house and they had nowhere to go. Jimmy sighed, wishing he had such problems. Squinting at Craig, and even sitting still he seemed to be going at one hundred miles per hour.

Craig left, Marco arrived. Marco's presence was so different from Craig's, the way Marco would look into his eyes and examine all the latest drawings and ask all the questions about how things were going. When Marco left his dad arrived, his suit neatly pressed.

"Jimmy," his dad said, and he could hear him straining to be cheerful.

"Dad, they say I can go home soon," Jimmy didn't want to cringe at the hopeful tone in his voice, but he'd had enough of this rehab center, the pressed meals, the water pitchers, the T.V. remote that hung from a wire on the bedrails. He wanted to go home.

His dad looked down, looked guilty, caught off guard.

"Uh, really? Well, that's great, son. Just great," The words were paper thin. His dad didn't think that it was great. Not at all.


End file.
